The Red Digital Cinema Camera Company is an American company that manufactures professional-grade digital cinematography and photography tools. Red cameras support raw recording of stills and video, in the case of the RED Epic-M up to 6K resolution.

The Red One in a simple setup

The company’s headquarters are in Irvine, California with studios in Hollywood. It has offices in London, Berlin, and Mumbai—and various authorized resellers and service centers around the world. Red also has retail stores in Hollywood and New York.

Red Digital Cinema was founded in 2005 by Jim Jannard, who had previously founded Oakley. The company started with a small group of entrepreneurs in a warehouse who wanted to build affordable, high-end digital video cameras and believed that 4K video was the future of digital image capture.[1]

At the 2006 NAB show, Jannard announced that Red would build a 4K digital cinema camera and began taking pre-orders. More than one thousand people put down a refundable deposit, and Red began work to fulfill the orders.

In March 2007, director Peter Jackson completed a camera test of two prototype Red One cameras, which became the 12-minute World War I film Crossing the Line.[2] On seeing the short film, director Steven Soderbergh told Jannard: "I am all in. I have to shoot with this." Soderbergh took two prototype Red ONEs into the jungle to shoot his film.[3]

Red Digital delivered the first Red camera in August 2007. Called the Red One, it had a 4K Mysterium sensor and could raw 4K images at up to 60 frames per second in the proprietary Redcode format.

The Red One was arguably the first affordable camera that provided filmmakers customizable features and out-of-the-box functionality with the "feature film quality" known to much more expensive 35mm film cameras. [3][4]

In 2009, Red released Redcine-X,[5] a post-production workflow for both motion and stills, the R3D Software Development Kit,[6] and introduced the world to the concept of "DSMC" (Digital Stills and Motion Camera).[7] In 2010, Red offered a sensor upgrade to owners of the original Mysterium sensor to the newer "M-X" sensor. Also in that same year, Red acquired the historic Ren-Mar Studios in Hollywood, and renamed it "Red Studios Hollywood".[8]

In 2013, Red began taking pre-orders for their newest camera, the Epic Red Dragon.[9]

The Red One was Red Digital Cinema’s first production camera.[10] Using an S35mm image plane, the Red One displays a natural depth of field from 2K to over 4K resolutions.[11]

The first Red Ones were outfitted with the 12 megapixel Mysterium sensor, capable of capturing up to 120 frames per second at 2K resolution and 30 frames per second at 4K resolution.[12]

The second generation, Red One Mysterium-X has a 14 megapixel Mysterium-X sensor. It captures up to 120 frames per second at 2K resolution and up to 30 frames per second at 4K resolution. With the upgraded sensor, the Red One Mysterium-X offers more dynamic range, higher sensitivity and enhanced color management tools than the Red One Mysterium.[13]

Scarlet-X is a professional digital stills and motion capture camera that comes with one of two sensors – the 14 megapixel Mysterium-X sensor or the 19 megapixel Red Dragon sensor.[15] Scarlet-X cameras with the Red Dragon sensor are known as Scarlet Dragons. The Scarlet Dragon, formerly an upgrade option, was announced as a for-purchase product at NAB 2013.[16]

Scarlet-X cameras are modular—each camera can be customized to customer needs. Like all Red cameras, Scarlet-X has interchangeable lens mounts.[17]

SCARLET shoots regular speeds of up to 30fps at 4K and up to 120 fps at 2k. At 5K, it can't exceed 18fps.

Mysterium is a 12 megapixel sensor designed specifically for Red’s first commercial camera, the Red One Mysterium. The sensor is capable of capturing up to 30 frames per second in 4K (1-120 fps in 2K). Mysterium has a native color balance of 5,000 degrees (Kelvin) and has a dynamic range of 66 dB (11 stops).

Mysterium-X is a 14 megapixel sensor designed specifically for the Red DSMC to capture video and stills at up to 5K resolution. The sensor includes high precision analog to digital conversion, capable of delivering up to 13.5 stops of dynamic range with daylight light sources over a camera sensitivity rating of 320-800 ISO. Variable frame rate imaging is up to 95 FPS at 5K FF resolution, and up to 400 FPS at 1K WS resolution. Mysterium-X has a native color balance of 5,000K (Kelvin) and electronic white balance color compensation from 1,700K to 10,000K.[11] Red One, Scarlet and Epic cameras each have a version containing the Mysterium-X sensor.

The Red Dragon sensor is a 19 megapixel sensor that captures video and stills at up to 6K resolution. The sensor captures over nine times more resolution than standard HD, resulting in native exposure that exceeds 35mm film in both latitude and image density. Red Dragon supports 100+ FPS, 16.5 stops of dynamic range, and advanced color science.[20]

In 2014, the Red Dragon sensor received a score of 101 DxO Mark sensor rating.[24] This marked the first time a digital cinema camera was tested alongside leading stills cameras.[25]The Red Dragon sensor is available within Epic and Scarlet camera systems.

Redcine-X Pro is a free of charge post processing software collection developed by Red, built specifically for Red camera systems. It includes a coloring toolset, integrated timeline, and post effects software collection for both stills and motion. The post-production software allows for non-destructive manipulation of 4K, 5K and 6K raw .R3D files.[26]

With the latest update of Redcine-X Pro, users can mark frames while shooting and access those specific frames within their timeline. Additionally, this latest version includes A.D.D. (Advanced Dragon Debayer), a new algorithm for Dragon that analyzes every pixel..[27]

Red Alert was the first form of workflow made available to Red owners/operators, though it was more of a diagnostic tool. It allowed Red One users to tweak debayer settings and render out to dpx/tiff/mov.[28]

Redcine was the first end-to-end workflow for Red users. A third-party company developed the software, and Red provided the SDK.

Redcine-X was the first workflow software developed solely by Red. Like Redcine, Red offered it as an end-to-end workflow solution for Red ocustomers. It preceded the current Redcine-X Pro.

Red Rocket is an internal PCI Express card that is capable of 4K, 2K, or 1080p real-time debaying and video playback of R3D files. It can be used to accelerate video editing in compatible Non-linear editing systems, outputting the image via HD-SDI to a user-supplied monitor. A component of the Red Rocket allows users to convert the HD-SDI signal to four HDMI outputs.[29]

Red Rocket-X is an internal PCI Express card optimized for the 6K Red Dragon sensor and is designed to accelerate the processing of R3D workflow, regardless of resolution. Compared to Red Rocket, Red Rocket-X processes and transcodes files up to five times faster.[29]

Red offers the Red Apple Workflow Installer, which applications that support QuickTime use to also support R3D files, including plugins for Adobe Photoshop,[30] Adobe Premiere Pro, Avid Media Composer, Final Cut Pro X, and Sony Vegas Pro.

Announced in 2012, the Redray Player was the first plug-and-play friendly device capable of providing 4K content to 4K displays. Using a 1TB internal drive to store content, Redray can play 4K, 3D or HD media. Additionally, the player supports 12-bit 4:2:2 precision at 4K resolution.[31]

The Red 3-Axis lens control system is a turn-key wireless lens control kit for driving focus, iris and zoom. Included is the T.H.C. (Tactical Hand Controller), a wireless remote that allows the operator to adjust lens settings from a distance.[32]

Announced at NAB 2013 and launched in 2014, The Redlink Development Kit is a SDK (software development kit) that allows programmers to create custom applications to control their camera via mobile device, computer, or microcontroller. The kit includes the Redlink Bridge, a wireless module that allows apps to communicate with the camera. The bridge supports a wireless communication range of approximately 50 feet.[33]

On August 18, 2008, Red filed a lawsuit against the electronics company LG over its use of the name Scarlet.[34] Red accused LG "...of taking the "Scarlet" brand name from the camera company, despite Red's denial of their request."[35]

On September 23, 2011, Jim Jannard announced that his personal email account was compromised by former Arri executive Michael Bravin.[36] A lawsuit against Arri and Bravin was filed at the end of 2011, and settled and dismissed in 2013.[37]

On June 27, 2012 Red sued Wooden Camera, a manufacturer of third party accessories, for patent infringement.[38]

In February 2013, Red filed for an injunction against Sony, claiming that several of its new CineAlta products, particularly the 4K-capable F65, infringed on patents the company held. They requested that Sony not only be forced to stop selling the cameras, but that they also be destroyed as well.[39] Sony filed a countersuit against Red in April 2013, alleging that Red's entire product line infringed on Sony patents. In July 2013, both parties filed jointly for dismissal, and as of July 20, 2013, the case is closed.[40]